Energy dependence of the fast fragment of the target nucleus in high energy hadron-nucleus interaction

This paper presents an extensive study on the dependence of the mean number of the fast fragment of the target nucleus n_g on the incident beam energy in proton-nucleus interaction in emulsion in the range 6·2E₀400 GeV/c. It has been observed that n_g decreases in the range 6·2E₀200 GeV/c, then increases and attains an approximately steady value up to 400 GeV/c. It is very difficult to explain this behaviour with the help of the existing nuclear production models.The author would like to thank Prof A. J. Herz (CERN), Prof. K. D. Tolostov (Dubna, U.S.S.R.), Prof. P. L. Jain (State University of New York, U.S.A.), Prof. G. Giacomelly (Italy) for kindly supplying the exposed emulsion plates.